


Childhood Habits

by weekend_conspiracy_theorist



Series: Leather Jackets and Lab Coats [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5+1, F/F, my first ever 5+1 in fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekend_conspiracy_theorist/pseuds/weekend_conspiracy_theorist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Lisa Snart bites someone's nose as a strategy of attack, and one time she does it because she's in love.</p><p>(Features: bickering Snarts, Lisa dealing with unwanted advances, a jewelry heist, damsel-in-distress Len, and a goldenfrost scene I've been wanting to write from the start.)</p><p>(Stands alone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually finished this fic and so normally wouldn't be posting. However, this thing is already longer than anything else I've written in the last year--the chapters take a dramatic jump in length after this one and then again after chapter three. Frankly, I could have published each chapter as a one-shot and they wouldn't have looked out of place with the rest of my fics. I'm also having a hard time finding motivation to finish this even though I really want to- probably end of semester stress, despite the surprisingly not-astronomical amount of work I need to do- and having a posting schedule will give me a deadline. So! expect a chapter every two days until I run out or the whole fic is posted.
> 
> Also, I should mention, the goldenfrost is only in the +1, but I'm counting the fic as a member of this series. (Original intention was to double the wordcount of the preceding 5 but, uh. I think those'll hit somewhere between 6 and 7 thousand words, and that's a lot of pressure for an author whose fics range between 1 and 3 thousand words, usually. I do have lots of good stuff planned for it, though, so it will probably be the longest chapter.)

She's very small.

 

She's bigger than she used to be, of course, but it's still the fact that she's so small that's running through the mind of the boy peering down at her with a furrowed brow. Ever since she learned to walk, she's not been still enough for him to really study, not while she's been awake, so he's taking his chance now.

 

(She, meanwhile, dreams in vague swirls of Technicolor, cats and strawberries and shiny pendants marching past.)

 

Everyone tells him they look alike—he's not sure how they can tell, when she's three and he's nine and both of their faces are round with adolescence, not similar structure. Maybe the line of her nose and his, or the shape of their eyes?

 

Her hair is thin and blonde to his shaggy brown, so it certainly isn't that, he thinks, scornful.

 

Her nose twitches in sleep, and it's adorable, though he denies the fact. He wrinkles his own in return, huffing, and tries to pull away.

 

(Their father thinks he went to sleep hours ago, but he'd first been reading under the covers by means of a flashlight he'd stolen from the kitchen and then moved to softly reading aloud to her when she'd woken up from a bad dream and cried out. He should return to his own bed.)

 

But her once-tiny-now-small hand, at some point, reached out to snag the bottom of his t-shirt, curling tightly, and he's forced to freeze in place unless he wants to wake her.

 

If he'd let her hold tight, she'd release him in a few minutes, roll over to her other side and he'd be free to escape. He tries, instead, to carefully pry her fingers away from the thin fabric—she feels him even through her dream, opens drowsy eyes to find his face inches from hers.

 

She shrieks, he jumps, they tumble to the floor in a mess of limbs—he's scared, suddenly, that he'll hurt her, and he does his best to make sure he's the one who lands on the bottom. She herself simply reacts on instinct, bites his nose with tiny white milk teeth.

 

He smothers a yell with one hand, pushes her away, and she finally recognizes him. She smothers a giggle behind her hand and stage whispers, "Sowwee, Lenny!"

 

He drops her unceremoniously back onto her bed and scurries away before anyone comes to investigate the commotion. His eyes sting with tears, but she didn't quite draw blood.

 

(This time.)

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the way I mentally referred to this chapter while planning it was "len and lisa are tiny assholes"

 

"I saw you the other day," she says, and she's the one who's nine now, bordering on ten. He hears her words, but he ignores her and continues reading. (It's the Iliad, and if he stops for too long all of these people's names might flee his mind.) She coughs. Waits. Coughs again. She can see the way his shoulders tensed further each time, and she coughs one final time to get him to snap, turn to her with narrowed eyes and a sneer hovering around his lips.

 

"What do you want, Lisa?" he asks, faux polite, and his grip on his book tightens. He has a feeling he knows what this is about.

 

"I saw you the other day," she repeats, sing-song, kicks lightly at his chair. She waits for a perfect beat, watching the muscle in his jaw tick- and there's just a hint of shadow, good for him, she thinks- and then she adds, "With that girl."

 

He misses the days when she was tiny and didn't talk much. "I don't know what you're talking about," he grinds out, because the best tactic for dealing with Lisa, he's found, is to deny, deny, deny.

 

"If you've already forgotten frenching one of the hottest girls in your grade, Lenny, then I'm worried for you," she states, and she grins when he flinches.

 

He won't learn to control his tells completely for a few years yet, and she's remarkably good at getting under his skin considering so few other people manage it. (She's quite proud of this, and she always will be.) It's the pitch of her voice, and his dual compulsions to murder her and murder anyone who comes near her.

 

"You aren't even ten; do you even know what frenching is?" he shoots back. (She does; there are middle schoolers who ride the same bus she does. She's sharp enough to have learned far more than she should have, from context and strategic guessing and occasionally asking her friend Mabel, who watches late night television.)

 

Lisa huffs. She won't give him a definition anyway, just in case she actually is wrong. "I know you were doing it with Veronica Mayberry behind the Quickie Mart on Saturday," she says instead.

 

He blinks, opens his mouth to tell her that she phrased that extraordinarily poorly, snaps it back shut while he deliberates on his best course of action. "No, you must have me confused with someone else," he finally says (deny, deny, deny) and turns back around, opening his book.

 

She is unimpressed. She kicks his chair again, harder this time. "Doesn't she have a boyfriend?" she asks, sweetly. (She's casual friends with Veronica's younger brother. She's very aware that Veronica does, in fact, have a boyfriend who is not, in fact, Leonard Snart. He's a junior on the football team, and even with a recent growth spurt, Len's three inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter and far less cruel, if just because the other boy has an entourage to spur him to greater heights.)

 

"That's probably who she was frenching, then," he replies, and she'd buy the nonchalance except that he hasn't flipped a page yet, and he reads faster than anyone else she knows. He realizes this himself, flips the page even though he hasn't taken in the last several lines his eyes skimmed across.

 

Lisa can smell her victory, practically reach out and touch it. She kicks his chair again, nearly rocking it over, and he spins around with a snarl.

 

"What do you want, Lisa?" he demands.

 

"Do my chores for the next week and I won't tell him."

 

"Why would he even believe you, _pipsqueak_?"

 

"If I tell him while Veronica's there, she'll give herself away." She rolls her eyes. "Plus, why would I lie?"

 

"Why would you tell the truth?" he points out, but he already knows. (If she issues an ultimatum and then doesn't follow through, she won't have any bargaining chips for next time.)

 

"Dishes only," he offers shrewdly.

 

"No. Everything." She kicks his chair _again_. He grits his teeth. She points out, "It's only a week. I could've been meaner."

 

He scoffs. "Impossible; you're a literal hellspawn."

 

"That's you, Lenny," she says, and this kick to his chair is both particularly vicious and entirely expected. He's moving out of it before she quite connects so she sends it flying, and then he's pinning her down. He feels a vague pang of guilt, considering he's six years older than her and he should probably be mature enough not to give in to (or, as he has in the past, provoke) these wrestling matches; this is childish and _irresponsible_ , it'd be all too easy to hurt her—

 

And she feels a pang of surprise, a shard of pain as she connects with the floor, and then she's struggling viciously, slamming her knee to his side a few times, and Len winces, flinches, Lisa tries to use that moment to escape but he lets his lower body drop fully onto her legs, uses his body weight to hold her in place.

 

They lay in silence for a moment, both struggling to get their breathing under control—and Len is listening for movement in the house. Paranoia prickles his skin, but their father really does seem to be gone; the only sounds he can hear are his own breaths, measured but deep and fast, and the tiny growl in the back of Lisa's throat. She gives another squirm, tries to twist her wrists so she can dig her nails into his hands, and his awareness snaps back into place.

 

"I'll do the dishes for two weeks," he snarls into the angry face below his. "Take the option, or I'll string you up by your ankles and leave you to the birds."

 

"Wouldn't," she spits, but uncharitably decides in the safe space of her own mind that Len probably would, just to keep her from having an opportunity to tell the jock.

 

"Try me, you little—"

 

She snaps her head upward, biting down brutally on his nose, and she takes advantage of the way he jerks away to squirm out from under him. "Dishes for three weeks," she says, and then she flees. She thinks she might have broken skin that time.

 

(Serves him right for putting his face so close to hers.)

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa's teenage years, and another chapter that doesn't break 1000 words
> 
> (I finished chapter five last night and can say for certain that the main portion of the fic clocks in at about 6700 words. You can do the math as to how long that makes the last two chapters.)

 

She's seventeen and Len's twenty-three and they don't talk much anymore. Ostensibly he's still her guardian, but what a laugh; when she hit fifteen he started taking jobs that drew him out of Central. Nothing longer than a week, at first - she remembers callused fingers clenching, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he prays that she'll tell him she needs him to stay- but the length of the jobs grew, and the length of time he spent with her shrank, and now he sends home checks when he can and when he feels like it, and she forges his signature on her report cards with the ease of practice. He'll call if he's about to do something particularly (stupid) dangerous, and she'll call if she's feeling particularly sentimental.

 

He calls far more often than she does.

 

She doesn't mind being alone so often, really, and the empty apartment is easy to fill with acquaintances whenever she misses company. (Highschool seniors don't question absent brothers; they just celebrate a lack of curfew.) She's also rarely home, between the long afternoons she spends at the rink and the long nights she spends with a group of kids she doesn't consider her friends (though they consider her theirs), doing the kinds of stupid things that teenagers running wild do.

 

Tonight, the bouncer at the club doesn't even card them—they're regulars with good fakes and big attitudes, and he recognizes them from the last time they came by. (Oh, he knows they're underage, but he can't prove it and he doesn't really care. They rarely cause trouble, just get drunk and dance and sometimes duck out the back to smoke cigarettes before coming back in to get more drunk and do more dancing.)

 

Lisa throws an arm around a boy who's an inch taller than her, less toned but more generally muscular, pulls him along in her wake as she takes to the floor. She doesn't like to drink, much, doesn't like the taste or the burn or the way it smells like memories of bad nights and bruises; she comes along just to dance.

 

He laughs when she grabs his arms and uses him like a puppet to make him start dancing, lets her orchestrate his movements all the way through the first verse and then dances with her properly. She's graceful, as natural here as she is on the ice, and it's obvious to everyone but him that her smile is for the music and not his touch. But when she doesn't complain when he sets a hand on her hip sometime during the third song, he thinks that means she's interested. (She thinks it's just part of their dance, reads nothing into the motion nor puts anything into it herself.)

 

At the end of the song he drags her off the floor with a hand slid through hers, and she feels a vague stab of annoyance. "I'm not in the mood to smoke," she tells him, voice tight, when he's led her out into the alley and the pounding of the music is no longer the only sound audible.

 

"Neither am I," he laughs, and he ducks in to press his lips against hers. Her lips taste sweet, like strawberry chapstick and the milkshake she'd shared with one of the other girls before they came here, but she doesn't kiss him back, even when he cups a hand around her jaw and presses closer to her.

 

He smells like grease and sweat and she shoves at his shoulders until he takes his lips from hers. She scowls, snarls, "You're cute, and maybe I'd have kissed you if you'd asked nicely or taken me out to dinner first, but right now you're just pissing me off."

 

"Come on, Lees," he says cajolingly, doesn't notice the way her jaw tightens at the nickname. (She hates it even from Len, makes him call her "Sis" if he doesn't feel like using Lisa.) "I know you want this."

 

He slides one hand into her back pocket, moves to kiss her again, and she spits out, "Don't touch me!" as she digs her nails into his wrists and pulls his hands off of her, ducks his lips and stalks away. She turns her head, snarling over her shoulder, "You have no idea what I want!"

 

(Enough money to talk Len out of his life of crime, a pair of skates that don't leave blisters on her heels or come second hand from the woman at the rink, a way to convince the stray cat that lives behind their school that she's not an enemy.)

 

He darts after her, surprise and confusion and anger roiling through him. "Lisa, stop it!" he grabs her arm, tugs her back to him, and he only gets a second to be relieved when she turns to face him, before her teeth are closing around the bridge of his nose. She slams a knee between his legs, spits his own blood into his hair as he falls to the ground.

 

"Don't _touch_ me," she snarls again, and then he's alone in the alley, two bright points of pain leaving him barely conscious.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jewel Heist! That took me forever to write! Who knows why!

It's hard to explain exactly how she ended up here, a twenty-four year old con artist with half a dozen successful heists to her name, from a seventeen year old figure skater with Olympic dreams.

 

She can blame it on Len, of course, on that job in Milwaukee where he asked her to (be a distraction) perform a routine for the party of a man whose art collection was worth millions. She can blame it on Roscoe, on the way she covered his tracks when she realized he was stealing from the agency to fund his criminal endeavors. She can blame it on her father, on how fucked up her childhood was and how it destined her to turn down the wrong path someday down the line.

 

But blaming someone else for this turn her life has taken is rather pointless—especially when she _likes it so damn much_.

 

Lisa breezes through the crowd, champagne in hand and the little kind of smirk on her lips that has most of the men (and quite a few women) glancing after her with heated eyes. (There's plenty for them to look at, too, the dramatic swoop of the back of her dress revealing a plane of pale skin and taut muscle.) The glass cases around her show a stunning woman with brown skin and purple stained lips turning her head to follow her path, and Lisa puts an extra sway to her hips. (The woman blushes slightly, turns back to her companion, and Lisa takes a moment to wish that she wasn't here on business. The woman is, to put it simply, _divine_.)

 

Instead, Lisa slides up to a man in an extraordinarily expensive tuxedo, slips her arm through his, and sips her champagne as she glances up at him through her eyelashes. He doesn't let himself falter in his conversation, but he slips an arm around her waist as she turns to set her empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter, a possessive hand burning at her hip.

 

She smiles and lets herself be drawn in, slides her arm under his jacket to mimic his grip.

 

His conversational partner appraises Lisa in a way that makes her glad she's not holding a drink- no temptation to make a scene- then winks conspiratorially and claps his hand to the tuxedoed man's shoulder. "We'll talk later," he chortles, jowls wobbling, and bobbles off. (The other party guests part around him, a tide shift that, despite its subtlety, nonetheless leaves no doubt in Lisa's mind that no one is much fond of him.)

 

Lisa's man heaves a sigh of relief- he rather detests the departing socialite- and then turns his chin down to Lisa. His thumb traces a circle over the smooth fabric of her dress, rhythmic and soft. "How are you enjoying your evening?" he asks.

 

(She doesn't tell him about the adrenaline humming in her bones, the thrill of adopting another persona and seamlessly sliding into a life that doesn't belong to her, the way her fingers itch to try and pick as many pockets as she can before the night is over.)

 

She simply hums and slips her hand into his back pocket—his grip tightens slightly on her waist, a subconscious reaction to her touch. (It's been years since he's encountered anyone as brazen as this woman.) "Small talk is boring, and I always find myself wondering why these things are held in museums," she tells him, drawling her words like a woman who's been to so many identical events she can no longer tell them apart.

 

He laughs. He's never actually given it much thought, but he hazards a guess and declares it with confidence. "There's an air of importance that comes with surrounding yourself with the remnants of history," he tells her, a grandiose wave of his hand indicating the room at large. "As if you're saying, 'I belong here, too. I am as important and as lasting as all of this has proven to be.'"

 

"Not to mention the marble floors and mahogany accents have a certain ambiance," Lisa muses, flicking her eyes across the elegant people milling about among glittering glass installations and displays edged by velvet ropes.

 

"That solves half of your dilemma, then," he says, a tone in his voice that has Lisa smirking as she turns her attention back to him, moves within his embrace so his hand is at the small of her back and they stand face to face, scant inches apart.

 

"And do you have an answer to my boredom?" she purrs, raising an eyebrow in an obvious challenge. "Know a way to keep me…" she glances over him, meets his eyes again with a smile stealing across her lips, "occupied?"

 

He backs away slowly, and his fingers catch her wrist to draw her along with him. "I may have an idea," he tells her, voice dark and smooth and sultry, and his eyes drift along the curves hugged by her dress.

 

She stands her ground, letting him pull her arm slowly away from her but not guide her feet. "I don't impress easily," she warns. (Manipulates.)

 

He glances at her necklace, a smirk hovers at the corners of his mouth. "What do I get if I do manage to?"

 

Lisa's lips spread into a smile, and he's too focused on the shape of them to notice how many teeth she reveals. "You get a kiss," she tells him, and she lets herself follow him.

 

"Just one?" he teases, turning so he can see where he's going, grip shifting to twine his fingers through Lisa's. He flashes his driver's license and a smile as they reach the edge of the room, and the security guards glance at each other before shrugging and letting him through. (They're not supposed to let any of the guests leave the main floor, but he's the richest man in the city and a major donor for the museum. Telling him no is more dangerous to their jobs than telling him yes.)

 

Lisa takes a quick stutter step, catching up and pressing close, and murmurs, "One for each moment you manage to impress me." She offers a smile of red lipstick and unspoken promises when he glances back at her, lets her fingertips trail down his chest.

 

His pace quickens, images of the two of them intertwined flickering through his thoughts, and Lisa lets her smile turn feral as his gaze turns frontwards once more. (She has no intentions of ever kissing him at all.)

 

He leads her up a staircase, down a long hallway- Lisa gives a cursory complaint about her high heels and how far does he expect her to walk?- and finally comes to a stop just outside a small, roped off archway, a smile tugging at his lips. "When you wore that necklace tonight," he asks her, "did you realize that the original piece just arrived at the museum? The exhibit opens—" he unclips the rope, winks—"tonight."

 

Lisa fingers the gems at her throat, a high quality replica of some Duchess of Westchester's prize jewels, lets her eyes get round. "I'd heard about the exhibit," she says, voice hushed, "but I didn't realize the necklace was already here."

 

(A floor and a long hallway away, the head security officer turns red in the face as she shouts at her underlings for having let the man in the tuxedo and the stunning redhead in the black dress leave the party room. She storms away, radioing in to the security desk to ask where the pair has wandered off to. She pities maintenance, for a moment, then decides she'll make the incompetent guards clean up whatever the socialites have managed to break or defile.)

 

The tuxedoed man lets Lisa's hand fall away, fumbles for the lights, misses her fiddling with her watch. (The cameras will be on the fritz in this wing of the museum for the next two minutes.) "Impressed?" he asks, as Lisa slips around him to peer into the glass case.

 

"Enthralled," Lisa purrs, turning into his embrace as he slides up behind her. His heart beats frantically, her fingers slide along his lapels and up to his shoulders—and then they find a specific nerve cluster in his neck and he crumples against her. She lowers him to the floor as gently as she can. (A minute and forty-three seconds left.)

 

She fools the sensors on the case with a few pieces of tape- a sand bag-idol kind of switch that she's perfected with weeks of preparation- and trades the fake at her neck for the real jewels inside. (One minute and seven seconds left.) With any luck, the switch won't be discovered until the exhibit is closing, several months down the line—at the very least, no one should know until tomorrow morning. The glass covering is in her hands, being settled neatly back into place, when the head security officer strides into the room.

 

"I'm afraid you two will have to rejoin—" the woman is saying, projecting loud enough to reach the back corners of the exhibit area, but she cuts off abruptly. Her gaze flickers over the scene- the woman in the black dress, holding the glass in the air, the museum benefactor, unconscious at her feet- and she can almost feel her job slipping out of her fingers.

 

Lisa lets the glass lower the last few inches, brushes a strand of hair (wig) out of her face and comments idly, "Well, this is _incredibly_ awkward."

 

The security officer snaps to her senses, draws her gun. Shouts, "Freeze!"

 

Lisa rolls her eyes, nudges the man onto his side so if he drools he won't choke himself. "Any clue if I've already made the switch or not?" she taunts. "Are you a good enough shot to miss the priceless artifact covering half of my chest, if I have?"

 

Lisa stalks across the floor- "stalks" is the only word to describe it, between her smirk and her smoldering eye contact and her swaying hips- towards the security officer, who reholsters her weapon with shaking hands. Despite them (to spite them), she plants herself firmly in the middle of the archway, grits her jaw. "I can't let you through," she tells Lisa. (Fingers clench into fists, feet slide into a defensive stance.)

 

Lisa draws to a stop. She doesn't have aren't many options here, she was too arrogant after her recent flawless crime spree to plan a proper contingency, _twelve seconds left_ -

 

The woman moves to attack, emboldened by the uncertainty that flits over Lisa's face-

 

There's a flurry of movement, and even in her heels Lisa's not taller than this woman, more agile and flexible but with less brute strength-

 

Lisa's pinned against the wall. (Four seconds.) The security officer tentatively removes one hand from Lisa's wrists, hoping the other is enough as she fumbles for the cuffs tucked through her belt, and Lisa snaps forward, teeth leading. The woman is knocked back, stumbles away, and Lisa sheds her heels even as she sprints out of the room and down the hallway. She had enough foresight, at least, to plant a bike at an alternative exit, and she summons the blue print to her mind and ducks down a random hallway to avoid the (cursing) security officer's wild shots.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to imagine Lisa's early days were split pretty evenly between cons, hijackings, and general break ins.
> 
> Also, to explain why this came a day later than the "every two day" schedule I set for myself, I found out last night that I didn't have to take the exam for my calc III class and was packing/cleaning/sleeping/driving seven hours and forgot to post! I'm home and happy now, though :D
> 
> Also also: can you tell I suck at writing action sequences because half the time I end up saying some variation of "there was a flurry of limbs"


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damsel in distress Len, a few seeds of Lisa and Cisco's epic bromance, and the second occurrence of my obsession with Top Chef being projected onto Lisa

Lisa's nearly thirty.

 

A year ago, maybe more, she stood in Shanghai with a phone to her ear, Len's voice gruff with static as he told her he was settling back in Central. She felt tired bone deep, as if Len admitting weakness was a sign that she could finally admit to herself that her feet throbbed from running and her heart ached for familiar streets, and she closed her eyes and told him she would go home, too.

 

That's how the Snarts returned to Central—though that's not how Lisa tells the story.

 

"'Come break me out of prison and then just stay in Central, Lisa,' Lenny says. 'We'll spend more time together,' Lenny says. 'Oh, by the way, superheroes are a thing now, and I have an archnemesis although I seem to work _with_ him more often than against him. Plus, sis, I still prefer to work with Mick because I'm an overprotective asshole misogynist at heart, and I couldn't bear it if you got hurt,' _Lenny says,_ " Lisa snarls, ducking into a dark, empty room as she feels her phone vibrating in her pocket. She checks the ID—Cisco. She closes her eyes, tries to tell herself to put the phone away and deal with the situation at hand, but it's Thursday night and—

 

And hopefully she can reign in his chatter and keep this short. She swipes to answer, presses the phone to her ear, says as loudly as she dares, "Cisco, baby, I didn't realize what night it was or I would have called. I don't think I can make it over for _Top Chef_."

 

"No, Lisa, I—" he breaks off as someone hisses at him to hang up, snarls back, " _She deserves to know_ ," and Lisa gets a sinking feeling as he apologizes, "Sorry, um, Cait and… the Flash, they're here. At STAR Labs, not my apartment, it's funny, I forgot it was _Top Chef_ night, too. You see, the thing is—"

 

Lisa closes her eyes. "My brother was working with the Flash when he got himself kidnapped."

 

She should have known these people were expecting the Flash, Central's number one leather-clad do-gooder, and not an angry thief with zero qualms about maiming anyone who got in her way. (She doesn't have any qualms about killing them either, except Len made her swear when he made the deal with the Flash, and it's just easier to do what Len wants sometimes. He gets so grumpy when she ignores him.) Everything makes much more sense now—blindingly obvious trip wires that still would probably succeed in surprising someone who was running at Mach 1, motion sensors beginning over a mile from the facility.

 

She can practically hear Cisco recalculating on the other end of the line. "You already know about the kidnapping?" he asks, cautious like he's wondering if she bugged the labs last time she was there, and Lisa huffs because she can't scream.

 

"Mick called me to let me know. He _apparently failed to mention a few details._ " Lisa's going to kill him. She planned it out months ago, when he and Len pulled their first job without her since she'd returned, so she won't even have to waste time deciding how to do it. The plan is quite _elegant_ in its simplicity, actually. She's decently certain even Cisco's cute, genius CSI friend won't be able to catch her.

 

"Great, well, okay, so we already tracked down where he is, and Ba—the Flash is just about to scooter poop on over there to grab him up and—"

 

"Tell him not to worry about it," Lisa says, finally tuning back in to Cisco's babbling voice from vivid fantasies of Mick's thick neck under her fingertips. "I'm already here. Third floor, north side, about ten minutes out from where they're holding Lenny."

 

"You're _already_ _there_?!?" Cisco repeats, unnecessary surprise coloring his voice. (She hears the worry, underneath all of the underestimation. She makes a mental note to break her heater before the next time he comes over so they have an excuse to cuddle and he has something tech-y to deal with that'll set him at ease.)

 

Lisa slips back to the door, pokes her head out, and murmurs to Cisco, "Try to keep your voice down, darling. Mama's trying to time her movements to avoid the cameras since she didn't have time to come up with a better plan."

 

(On the other side of the building, Len swims out of unconsciousness, feels blood trickling down his forehead and a vaguely hysterical, floating sense of relief that Lisa's started ditching their weekly family dinners in favor of watching cooking shows with Cisco Ramon. That she won't have a chance to be scared for him all over again, not until Barry and his friends have already rescued him.)

 

"I'm going to start hacking the security system and covering your tracks, so I'm handing the phone over to the Flash, okay?" Cisco says, and Lisa hums vague agreement as she slips back into the hallway. Her boots are louder than she would like, tapping softly on the tile no matter how carefully she moves, but she had to optimize her options—soft soles are better for sliding unnoticed through the halls, but hard soles are better for breaking someone's knee.

 

There's a crackle of static, the phone being passed from Cisco's hands to the Flash's, and then she's asked, in a thankfully quiet tone, "Do you need physical back up?"

 

Lisa peers around the corner into another hallway and spots a guard, back to her and moving away at a slow pace. "One sec," she murmurs. She sets the phone carefully on the floor, ignores the Flash's unintelligible response, and moves as quickly and quietly as she can after the guard. She sprints the last few yards- he'd hear her one way or another- and jumps high enough to put him in a choke hold before he's done much more than begin to look over his shoulder. He stumbles under her sudden weight, but she catches their body weights as her feet touch the floor once more, arresting their fall. She holds him half-suspended as she strains to keep a tight hold against his scrabbling fingers, focuses on the burn in her muscles and the steady beat of her heart as his struggles weaken.

 

He goes completely limp, but Lisa holds on for another fifteen seconds.

 

(He feels anxiety clawing at his chest as he realizes she's not falling for his possum gimmick, and then everything's fading to black.)

 

She manhandles the unconscious form into a storage closet, and then Lisa jogs back for her phone, scoops it off of the tile and spares a wink for the security cameras. "It's adorable that you want to help me out, Fleet feet," Lisa tells him, her breaths steady and her voice confident, "but I promise I have this covered. I also didn't bother dismantling the traps when I could just avoid them, and I think Cisco and Lenny might murder me if I let you run in here and get yourself blown up."

 

"If you're—"

 

"I'm sure," she breaks in, snaps a little harder, a little louder than she'd meant to. She knows they mean well, she knows they like her and just want her to stay safe, but _God,_ she needs them to trust that she can take care of herself. (She always _has_.) "Ability doesn't negate experience, honey; just because you run fast doesn't mean you're more effective. Tell Cisco thanks for dealing with the cameras."

 

Jabbing the red button isn't nearly as satisfying as snapping a phone shut used to be. (It's perhaps the only thing she doesn't like about smart phones.) She slips the phone back into her pocket, grits her teeth against the realization of how much time she's lost, and moves off at a jog.

 

(Optimization: speed over silence.)

 

She spots a guard, manages to duck back into an alcove before he sees her. Her heart pounds in her chest, and she thinks he must hear it as he passes within feet of her, but he notices neither that nor the tremors running through her muscles as she forces herself to stay still. She needs the element of surprise.

 

The guard is gone. She moves off again, and when she feels her phone vibrate once more, she briefly considers ignoring it. She bites back a sigh of annoyance, shoots a glare at the closest security camera, slips the phone from her pocket. "What?" she snaps.

 

"You're on the wrong floor, Len—"

 

(— feels a curl of something resembling anxiety, watching the group of men armed with automatic weapons lined up between himself and the only entrance. (The windows have even been barricaded, and the fact that they've thought about the Flash's propensity for running up walls makes the feeling that isn't worry burn brighter in his chest.) He's seen the Flash catch a bullet before, but that's nothing compared to this.)

 

Lisa cuts Cisco off. "I know." She throws open the door she's been looking for, paces off three yards and pulls the shape charges from the pocket of her jacket. "He's on the far side of the room, right?" she'd planned to gamble on their placement of him- it wouldn't make sense for them to have him anywhere other than as far away from the door as they could get, after all- but since Cisco's hacked into their cameras, well, she might as well make sure she's not about to drop the ceiling on her brother's head.)

 

"He is. Lisa, is that an explosive?"

 

"How else do you think I'm going to surprise the dozen heavily armed gunmen when there's only one entrance to the room?" Lisa sets the charges, moves back into the hallway. (They're designed such that all of the force should go downwards and probably wouldn't be big enough to kill her even if something went wrong, but she's learned enough lessons, from her own experiences and Mick's, that it's better safe than sorry where explosives are concerned.) "I'm going to need both hands in a moment, love. I'll come by tomorrow night so we can watch the episode we're missing right now."

 

Cisco breathes out heavily through his nose, probably convincing himself there's no point in arguing with her, and then tells her, "Be careful, Lisa. Barry's waiting, about two miles out, if things start to go sour."

 

"When I come over tomorrow, you can also explain why your CSI friend is primed to come running to my rescue," Lisa tells him, satisfaction licking through her gut that her suspicion of the Flash's identity was right, and then she hangs up before Cisco can respond.

 

She puts her phone back in her pocket.

 

The shape charges detonate.

 

Footsteps ring through the halls as every guards in the vicinity moves towards her even as she darts back into the room, takes a flying leap through the jagged hole in the floor, and hits the ground with a roll to absorb her momentum. Over half of the goons in the room have been taken down by the chunks of plaster—the gold gun makes quick work of another five, helpfully standing in a row where she can mow them down with an extended stream.

 

Len says "Lisa?" in a way that tells her he must have a concussion; there's too much genuine emotion, too much shock in the two broken syllables for him to be speaking through a clear mind.

 

"This is why you should work with me instead of Mick," she answers, growls, drops her gun as the final goon (gun knocked from his hand in the explosion) gets in too close. They trade punches, Lisa gritting her teeth when he lands a blow and him grunting with surprise when she does, and then one of the others stumbles back to his feet from where he'd lain, stunned but not unconscious.

 

Fighting two men at once is harder than the movies make it look. They don't stand back and take turns, letting the hero defeat one at a time.

 

The man at her back dives for her knees while she's preoccupied dodging the meaty fists of the man in front, and though she notices him and jumps at the last second he clips her, sends her crashing to the floor. She throws her weight as best she can to land on him—gives him an elbow to the kidneys for his efforts.

 

She can hear Len's chair rocking as he struggles, hears his promises of retribution towards the men she's fighting, but she closes him out. She can't worry about him when there's a man on his feet while she's on her back (and there's also a man under her back, but she thinks the kidney punch has taken him out for good this time). The man tries to grab her, but she slams her foot into his knee.

 

Lisa's not at a good angle for leverage, the kick is fairly weak, but it makes him back off enough for her to roll off of the man under her. She makes it halfway to her feet—the man grabs her by the ponytail, and her vision goes white as he slams her back into the wall.

 

She retaliates by slamming her knee up into his crotch.

 

He drops her, and they both crumple into a pile—Lisa's scalp stings, and when his face winds up near hers she bites him out of spite before shoving him off to the side. (It doesn't draw blood, lacking her normal snappish desperation, but there's enough welting that she's satisfied nonetheless.)

 

She brushes off her jeans, kicks him viciously to knock him out, and does the same to the henchman she'd elbowed in the kidneys. (She likes that mantra the Mythbusters have: "Overkill is underrated.") Then, and only then, does she move to Len's side.

 

"Why're you here, Lees?" he slurs, the tension finally slipping out of his arms as he stops struggling against his bonds. For once, she doesn't object to the nickname.

 

"Mick told me you needed me, dumbass," Lisa tells him, and she hates how her voice goes unintentionally soft and fond. She carefully saws through the ropes with her pocket knife, biting her lip as she fights down the rage over the raw, red state of his wrists. (Rage isn't good. Rage is like dad.) Blood hits her tongue, copper and thick, and she releases her lip, swallows hard. "He was a bit too beat up to come, but he recognized the boys who grabbed you, knew it was some of Scarliotti's gang, so he passed it on."

 

Lisa hands him the knife to deal with the ropes at his ankles and begins clearing the furniture away from the window. "Think you can handle a ten foot drop, or am I going to have to fight our way back out of here while you try not to throw up from your concussion?"

 

"I can handle it," Len grunts. He saws through the last of the tape, then lets himself rest, elbows on his knees and head hanging loose. (His head started to pound not long after he woke up, but actual movement is making it thousands of times worse.)

 

Lisa knows he probably really can't, but it's still the better option compared to having him get shot while she's in the middle of a fight. So she just tells him, "Good. I'd hate to have to ditch you right after saving you," and guides him to his feet, wipes the blood off of his forehead and then onto his jeans.

 

"Stupid to come alone," he mutters.

 

"Stupid to get so associated with the Flash they kidnap you as bait for him." Lisa returns, pulls his arm over her shoulders, and rolls her eyes. "Besides, I was effective, wasn't I?"

 

Len makes a grunt that Lisa interprets as "Yes, but I don't want to admit it." Instead he just grumbles, "Can't believe you still bite people on the nose."

 

"You know what they say about old habits," Lisa tells him drily. "It's the same as the title of that Bruce Willis movie you like so much."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thus ends the five from "5+1" :)
> 
> the +1 is very, very close to completion and should get posted either tomorrow or the day after. it's already over three thousand words, will definitely break four, and may come close to five.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa and Cait being adorable, ft. cameos by Lisa's cats and a delightful little old man

She doesn't look small.

 

Even in sleep, Lisa fills the room—she has a presence, a power, that shines through even as she lies on her stomach, sheet pooled low on her back and hair cascading over the pillow, the dim light creeping around the curtains catching the lighter highlights. She is peaceful, however, muscles lax and pliant and still in a way that Cait rarely sees when Lisa's awake—her girlfriend is pure energy, drama and slink and grace and a paranoia only fed by her own penchant for mischief and hoodwink.

 

Cait thinks it's telling. That when she woke up this morning, gracelessly extricated herself from the sheets tangled around her legs and stumbled into the bathroom, Lisa woke up only enough to mumble a heatless complaint and roll back over. She thinks it means Lisa trusts her, so far as Lisa is capable of trusting anyone other than Leonard.

 

Soft smile lingering at the corners of her lips, she slides close to Lisa, sweeps the blonde hair from one side of her neck to the other, presses her nose into the exposed side of Lisa's neck. "You should wake up," she murmurs. Kisses Lisa just behind her ear.

 

An arm sneaks out, catching her around her waist, and Lisa makes a disgruntled noise. "Ask me again when you're naked," she grumbles, but she tugs Cait closer. She's on that fuzzy edge of coherence and sleep, teetering so she may fall to either side of the precipice, and Cait's warmth- even through her jeans and blouse- is a comfort she seeks in any stage of consciousness.

 

Cait runs a hand down Lisa's spine- Lisa shivers, pulls Cait even tighter to her- and places more kisses along the skin she can reach, the curve of Lisa's shoulder and the smooth white scar on her shoulder blade that she still hasn't gathered the courage to ask the story behind. (She's not sure which would bother her more, to know it came from Lewis or to know that Lisa earned it later, in her life of crime.) She curves her hand around Lisa's hip, just under the edge of the sheet in a mimicry of the grip Lisa has on hers, and then she murmurs, "You _really_ ought to get up. I have a surprise planned for the day."

 

"The kinky kind of surprise?" Lisa asks, smirking as she finally shifts so she and Cait are face to face. Cait's battling down a laugh, Lisa can see it in her eyes, and she hooks a leg over Cait's, tugs them flush as she purrs, "I would get out of bed for a surprise like that… or, rather, I _wouldn't_."

 

The laugh wins, Cait burying her nose in Lisa's neck as she's wracked with giggles, and Lisa mentally preens. "You're ridiculous," she tells Lisa, draws back to meet her eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that?"

 

"Regularly." Lisa raises an eyebrow. "Just not normally while I'm naked and pressed against them."

 

"Then I'm your first," Cait says drily. "I feel so special."

 

(Words catch in Lisa's throat, words like "That's because you are" and "The last time I felt this way, I was twenty and then he died", but she hasn't known how to say things like that since the first time she took someone else's name and made it her own and even before that, since the first time she built a wall around herself and gave Lenny the only copy of the key. So she just wiggles her eyebrows, winks lewdly, lets Cait push her away with a laugh and slip out of her arms.)

 

"I'll go pour us both some cereal and some coffee," Cait tells her, leaning back in to peck her on the lips, "and by the time I'm done you'll be dressed. Warmly."

 

Cait walks away, and Lisa shouts after her, "I'm not Barry Allen attempting to fight a metahuman! You're not allowed to boss me around!"

 

"Sweater and thick socks recommended!" Cait tosses back over her shoulder, grinning widely, as she passes through the doorway. The lights are off, the space barely illuminated- there's something, she's found, about Rogues and thick curtains- but Cait moves easily, thoughtlessly. Lisa's apartment is nearly as familiar as her own, these days, and she suspects the feeling's mutual—she'd moved an end table in her own apartment the week before, only to wake up to Lisa's quite _creative_ cursing when she'd run into it while getting up for a sip of water in the middle of the night.

 

(Cait's heart had been pounding, adrenaline pumping through her veins at a cry of pain echoing through her apartment, until she heard Lisa calling her end table a "possessed piece of shit mahogany on uneven legs" and broke into hysterical laughter instead. Lisa'd glared from her position on the floor as Cait flipped on a light, sniffed imperiously and hobbled to her feet. "Next time, give a girl some warning," she'd groused, chin high as she attempted to regain her dignity.

 

"Oh, like you gave me warning that you'd adopted yet another cat?" Cait had returned drily, then dropped her chin back to her arms, grinning with a sparkle in her eye. "Come back to bed and I'll give you a nice, _lengthy_ apology.")

 

Kirk emerges from that mysterious extra-dimensional space where felines lurk, waiting for the perfect moment to scare their humans into embarrassing themselves, and rubs against one of Cait's legs. She can hear the purring even across the five feet that separates her ears from the cat, feel the vibrations against her calve like a cement mixer with too much aggregate. She gazes down, huffs a sigh. "I already fed you when I was moving around the first time," she tells him, coming to a stop because she knows he'll manage to trip her if she starts moving again.

 

"Feed him again; Spock and McCoy probably wouldn't let him have any," Lisa shouts. Psychic, when it comes to her furred and feline companions.

 

"He's the biggest." Cait nudges Kirk- big, orange-ish brown, extraordinarily fluffy- away, glances back at the door to Lisa's bedroom as she says, rather more petulantly than she would wish, "Why does he let them boss him around?"

 

"Because he's also the only one I purposefully acquired from a good home—"

 

Those are the only words Lisa has ever used to describe how she got Kirk, and Cait's fairly certain it means she stole him. It could also just mean that she obtained him from a friend or acquaintance whose cat had kittens though, so she's never asked for clarification in case Lisa takes offense at her jumping to conclusions.

 

"—so he's the least pushy. Doesn't have the same 'I grew up on the streets' survival instinct." Lisa tugs on her jeans and moves to the door way, sweater (an obnoxious shade of orange) in hand. "You can just give him a bit of lunchmeat from the fridge. He'll eat it fast enough the other boys can't bully him into giving it up."

 

"Have you ever thought about the fact that if our lives were normal," Cait begins as she leans down to dig the turkey out from the bottom shelf- Lisa takes a moment to appreciate the view- and then straightens, nudging the door shut with her elbow, "the peculiarity of your cats would be the weirdest thing we had to deal with?"

 

Lisa pulls the sweater over her head and saunters into the kitchen, running a hand down Kirk's back when she gets there. (His purrs stutter and then increase in volume.) "However, we live in a world where people have super powers and time travel exists and Barry Allen can get a date, so my cats are rather low on the weirdness scale."

 

Caitlin snorts, covers her mouth with one hand. "Awful," she tells Lisa.

 

"Amusing," Lisa counters, reaches around Cait's waist and slips her hands into Cait's front pockets. "Where's that coffee I was promised?" she asks.

 

"You moved a lot faster than I expected, and your cat demanded I deal with it first." Cait pulls Lisa's hands out of her pockets so she can turn and press a quick kiss to her lips before sliding past to grab the coffee pot. "You could work on the cereal."

 

"Boring," Lisa sighs, but Cait's pea coat is waiting by the door, neatly folded with her keys on top, so she doesn't try to argue for omelets or pancakes. Whatever Cait's surprise is, it has a schedule. She grabs bowls and spoons and milk and the Captain Crunch that Cait heavily judges her for buying but eats nonetheless. (Cisco, on the other hand, always tries to steal it when he comes over. _But you can't steal from a thief, Ramon._ )

 

Spock and McCoy have appeared from somewhere mysterious (probably behind the couch) upon hearing the sound of Kirk chewing, and while the coffee brews Cait crowds them away until the ginger fuzzball is done. Lisa can't help but be distracted from the cereal to watch her girlfriend _literally herd cats_ and buries a grin behind her hand as she resists the urge to make a joke about Cait having acquired the skill from her "job" at STAR Labs.

 

(She's already gotten in two pot shots about Barry Allen this morning; if she goes for three Cait will get that little wrinkle in her nose and go from begrudgingly amused to mildly annoyed.)

 

Cait looks up, brushing a strand of hair back from her face, and she smiles when she catches Lisa's eye—it's something soft, full of emotion that she desperately wants to blurt out but doesn't for fear of scaring Lisa off. She holds Lisa's gaze for a long moment, Lisa's grin softens too, and Cait opens her mouth even though she's not certain what she's going to say.

 

The coffee maker beeps.

 

"Perfect!" she says, a little too loud and a little fast, but Lisa also flinches back to her previous task, hurriedly pouring the milk.

 

(She doesn't pour the cereal first; it's the strangest thing Cait's ever seen and the source of their first major fight. Neither of them are certain how it got so out of hand, but they'd ended up screaming at each other- the cats had fled the room, claws audibly catching and tearing at the carpet- and then mutually storming out. Of course, when they ran into each other on Cisco's doormat, both fuming and holding bottles of alcohol, the fight had resolved itself pretty instantaneously.)

 

"Going to let me in on the surprise?" Lisa asks when they're sitting at the table, Lisa slouched with her feet resting on the edge of Cait's seat, one of Cait's hands rested idly on her ankle, their breakfasts mostly eaten. She shifts slightly, shoving her cold bare toes under Cait's thigh, and Cait looks up from the news she's been skimming on her phone. (She used to send Iris obnoxiously emoji-filled messages of congratulations every time she made the front page, but now it happens so often it feels unnecessary.)

 

"That would kind of defeat the purpose of the surprise," she points out, carefully doesn't laugh when Lisa pouts moodily down at the oddly colored milk left behind now that she's eaten all of the cereal.

 

"You're the worst," she mutters.

 

Cait shrugs, returns to her phone. "You're the one dating me."

 

Lisa huffs, threatens "That could always change," and doesn't even feel a stab of annoyance when Cait pats her ankle as if to say, "Whatever you want to think, honey." She knows Cait is right.

 

Cait retracts her hand from Lisa ankle so she can drain the last of her coffee, and then she rises, stretches, and gathers up their bowls. Lisa makes a noise of complaint at the dregs of milk being stolen away from her, but is promptly distracted by McCoy jumping onto the table and trying to stick his snout in her coffee mug. "We should get going, though," Cait says, the sounds of Lisa quietly cursing out the cat so routine she barely even notices them.

 

"I'll go get my boots," Lisa sighs, picking up the tabby with one hand and her mug with the other. She drains the last of the coffee as she ignores McCoy's squirming attempts to get away, then passes the mug off to Cait and wanders away.

 

"Grab a scarf and some gloves and an extra jacket, too," Cait calls after her, mentally comparing the thickness of Lisa's sweater to the chill of Central's snow-covered streets.

 

She turns on the faucet, rinses out their dishes, listens to the rustling sounds of Lisa searching through her rather extensive closet. "Are you this much of a mother hen to Cisco?" Lisa shouts eventually, realizing she'd left Cait's order unchallenged, and Cait snorts and points out, "Cisco is a second-generation Colombian immigrant; he starts layering in mid-September."

 

She drops the dishes into the dishwasher (shoos Spock away when he tries to climb inside as well) and is drying her hands as Lisa finally emerges, wearing the gold wool scarf that Shawna had given her for Christmas and a smirk that dares Cait to comment on the way it clashes with her sweater. She has her leather jacket draped over her arm and her gloves in hand. "Shall we?" she asks.

 

Cait walks over to her and pulls her in by her scarf, presses their lips together softly until Lisa sighs and tilts her head to deepen the kiss. One of the cats winds through their legs, meowing, and they're both breathing on just this side of too heavy when Cait finally pulls back. She smiles, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, and Lisa wouldn't trade this moment for any jewel in the world.

 

"Let's go," Cait says, backing away with Lisa's hand caught in hers (though Lisa doesn't need that gentle, insistent pull to begin moving her feet).

 

Central is quiet as they drive through its streets, sleepy and muted with its blanket of snow (replenished sometime during the night), and Cait stays quite mum on the subject of their destination despite Lisa's needling. The sun is high and bright but weak, doing nothing to cut through the chill of the morning, and Lisa finally pulls on her jacket as they exit the city. She falls silent ten minutes past the city line, idle curiosity intensifying into something which keeps her sitting straight in her seat, studying the signage they pass and wracking her mind for possibilities.

 

(Next to her, Cait's radiating a smugness that's tinged with nerves, and it doesn't take too much longer before Lisa's staring at her instead of their surroundings. Narrow, suspicious eyes—it's not that she _really_ thinks Dr. Caitlin Snow, goody two shoes best friend of the Flash who's chummy with several additional superheroes and sets spiders free outside rather than kill them, would drive her into the middle of nowhere to murder her and dispose of the body, but the thought still crosses her mind.)

 

"I'm not taking you out into the middle of nowhere to kill you or whatever it is that you're thinking, Lisa," Cait sighs, turning down a dirt road, and Lisa sniffs and turns away, crossing her arms over her chest. "We're practically there, just chill out for another moment, please?"

 

"Wrong sibling," Lisa mutters, but Cait can see her deflate in her periphery.

 

Cait taps her nails on the wheel, her anxiety mounting the closer they get to their destination. She's not certain why Leonard would tell her about this place if he thought she wouldn't act on it, why he would subtly encourage something that he thought might hurt Lisa- she doesn't understand much about the elder Snart sibling and she's still certain he has his sister's best interests at heart- but she's suddenly frightened that this is going to blow up in her face. (Possibly literally, if Lisa's in a bad enough mood.)

 

She sees the exact moment that Lisa realizes where she's been brought—the moment she spots the wooden sign with its flaking paint declaring them on the road to "THE MIDWEST'S FAVORITE SKATING POND". Lisa'd just begun to relax back into her seat and then she was sitting ramrod straight, head turning to follow the sign until the car was past it, fists clenching subconsciously.

 

She continues staring out the window, eyes blank, and Cait stays carefully quiet, still except for the necessary adjustments of the wheel, letting Lisa work through her thoughts in silence.

 

(She hasn't touched a pair of skates since Roscoe died, hasn't truly skated since even before that—when she devoted her life to crime, when she set her sights on gemstones instead of gold medals. She waits for it to hit, the visceral reaction, the sickness in her gut, yet all she feels is a dull sort of heartthrob, the kind of sorrow that comes with loss and years of distance.)

 

Lisa forces her hands to relax, settles back in her seat, and asks idly, "Do you even know how to skate, cutie?"

 

"It's been _years_ , and I was never very good in the first place," Cait admits, glancing over at Lisa for as long as she dares, and all she finds is a bittersweet smile and blue eyes with just a touch of reprimand.

 

("Seriously, a little warning next time," Lisa murmurs into Cait's skin, hours and an overworked heater later, and Cait winces, spells out an apology in the touch of her lips.)

 

"I'm sure I can find it within myself to teach you the basics," Lisa says. Her smile tilts slightly, into something a little more playful, a little more genuine. "Think Cisco realized how accurate 'Glider' was when he gave me my codename?"

 

Cait laughs, feels the last of her nervous tension seep out of muscles. "I can, at the very least, confirm that none of us on Team Flash knew about your ice dancing past until Linda found out we were dating and performed a very thorough Google search."

 

Lisa's head snaps to Cait. There's an expression on her face, something mischievous and taunting, that Cait distrusts immediately. "You Googled me?" Lisa asks, an edge of glee in her voice.

 

Cait frowns, shoots back in instinctive defense, "Linda did, not me!"

 

Lisa coos, leaning towards Cait, setting a hand on the inside of her thigh. "That's _adorable_. I can't believe you cyber-stalked me."

 

"You are blowing this extremely out of proportion!" Cait squawks, batting at Lisa's hand. "You are so—"

 

"You cyber-stalked me, and then you used the knowledge you gained from cyber-stalking me to take me on an extra-special date!"

 

"Stop it!"

 

"That's so teenage, Snowball, I can't believe it."

 

"I can't believe you just called me 'Snowball.'"

 

"Not nearly as embarrassing as you cyber-sta—"

 

"We're here!" Cait announces loudly, cutting Lisa off, and pulls into a parking spot. Despite the sign's claim, the parking lot is very small and very empty, with just a single beat-up old car in addition to Cait's neat, sleek Nissan.

 

"I'm not yet convinced that you have no intentions of trying to murder me," Lisa informs Cait cheerfully as she unfolds herself from the car. She shoves her gloved hands in her pockets, beams when Cait has moved around the car to join her.

 

Cait slips an arm through Lisa's. She raises an eyebrow, smirks slightly as she leads the way to the building next to the pond. "One of my best friends is a CSI; do you really think you'd get forewarning if I was trying to kill you?"

 

Lisa hums. "Excellent point. I feel reassured."

 

A bell over the door tinkles as they enter, and a little old man looks up from the dated issue of Time Magazine he'd been reading. They come to a stop, and he blinks, the motion magnified and exaggerated by his coke bottle glasses. "You ladies lookin' to skate?" he asks, closing the magazine with fingers swollen by arthritis.

 

"That was the plan," Cait says, smiling, and Lisa nods her agreement. "We'll also need to rent skates?"

 

"Most people do, most people do…" he waves a hand as he rises from his seat, heading towards the door labeled "RENTALS" in block letters. "You look like, hm, a size eight and a size nine?"

 

"Good eye." Lisa grins, leans down to whisper in Cait's ear, "Think he's as good at spotting security cameras as he is at judging shoe sizes?"

 

Cait smacks her side, hisses, "You cannot recruit the little old skating man for your next heist!"

 

"I wouldn't recruit him for the _heist_ just for—"

 

"Will you be paying with a credit card?" the man calls, bustling back into the room, skates in hand.

 

"Mhm." Cait slips her arm out from Lisa's, stepping forward as she rifles through her purse. "I assume you take Mastercard?"

 

"I take everything, dear," he chuckles, sliding the skates across the counter to her and holding out a hand for the card. "It'll be fifty flat—ten apiece for access, fifteen for each pair of skates."

 

Cait hands over her card, nodding. "Just what your website said."

 

"Oh, that. Yes, my nephew set that up for me." He glances up, leans in conspiratorially to confide, " _My_ coding skills went out of date with the Commodore 64." He straightens once more, adjusting his glasses with a bark of laughter too big for his frail frame.

 

Lisa sidles up behind Cait, dropping her chin to her girlfriend's shoulder. She slips her arms around Cait's waist and comments idly, "That was nice of him."

 

"He certainly thought so," the man says, sniffing imperiously. He hands Cait her card, the receipt, and a pen, and adds in a tone of utter disgust, "Wouldn't shut up about it for months."

 

Cait buries a grin behind her off hand as she finishes signing, and Lisa snickers. "How'd you deal with that?"

 

He looks at Lisa with narrowed eyes. "I don't know what you mean to imply," he says, voice too indignant to be natural. "I simply reminded him about the time I bailed him out of jail and didn't tell my sister, and he found himself some humility all on his own."

 

(He ends with a wink.)

 

" _Ruthless_. I like you." Lisa steals Cait's pen, scribbles out her number on the back of the receipt. "You ever need a hand, old timer, you call me." She winks, mouths something Cait can't see, and the man barks another laugh.

 

"Whatever you say, blondie," he agrees, taking back the receipt and his pen. "You gals can change your shoes over there and then leave 'em wherever. Not likely anyone else'll show up, so I won't worry about making you check them or anything."

 

"Thank you, sir," Cait says, and he snorts. She sees him mouthing 'sir' and shaking his head as he turns away, grabbing his magazine once more as he clambers up onto his stool. Lisa takes their skates and leads the way to the two plastic chairs, flopping down and brushing her hair back out of her face. She removes her gloves for the time being, sets them on her knee as she slips off her boots, and forces herself to pull on the first skate without even a moment of hesitation.

 

(It doesn't pinch at the heel, and she feels just a bit silly for having almost expected it to.)

 

She's always had excellent fine motor skills, developed them even further over her years of pick-pocketing and lock picking, but the way she handles the laces on her skates is pure muscle memory. (There's a strange kind of satisfaction in the way it comes so easily even after all of this time, even if she knows it's partially because of the similar set-up of the laces on her combat boots.)

 

Cait, on the other hand, may be spectacularly good at handling a pipette, but she's flushed pink with embarrassment by the time she's done fumbling through the motions of tightening the laces and tying up the ridiculously long strings. (She knows she's just going to get increasingly more embarrassed as the day goes on, knows she's going to fall flat on her face at least once and probably closer to a dozen times, but it's worth it for the grin on Lisa's face as she drags Cait out the door, the old man behind the counter calling out a distracted "Have fun!" as they go.)

 

Lisa leaves Cait at the bank as she first steps out onto the ice, takes a few test strokes to find her balance- the ice is bumpier than she's used to, natural instead of maintained- before she's moving as fast as she can, gliding across the ice as fast as Barry's slowest run- the trees and the open sky are so different from stadiums and fluorescent spotlights- and she jumps, just to see if she can land it, and then she's on one skate with her arms spread out, falling naturally back into old form, and Cait's laughing and clapping from the bank and-

 

Lisa likes this more. Likes the January country air snatching at her hair and worming its way under her layers, likes having a single beautiful girl cheering instead of an entire roaring crowd.

 

She skates back to Cait, spraying ice as she comes to a hard stop. She holds out a hand and meets Cait's eyes with a smile that was meant to be a grin. "I won't let you fall," she promises. (She doesn't think she's talking about today, this moment here on the ice.)

 

"I don't necessarily think you'll have a choice," Cait tells her. (She knows she's not talking about a physical head-over-heels tumble.)

 

Lisa laughs, and then Cait takes the hand and steps carefully out onto the ice. Her grip tightens against her will until she's practically clutching at Lisa like a lifeline, and she almost expects a snarky comment—but the thief is looking down at Cait's feet as they begin moving. (Lisa's skating backwards, confident and elegant as ever, and Cait's taking tiny, clunky steps rather than skate properly.)

 

"Gotta _try_ and do it right, at least," Lisa tells her, glancing up. "Just, keep your weight forward, okay? Take it slow… nice, long movements… That's it..."

 

"This is awful," Cait squeaks, her foot sliding out from under her, and it's only Lisa's readjustment that keeps them from tumbling over.

 

Lisa raises an eyebrow. "Your idea," she points out, amused, and Cait's cheeks aren't just red with the cold as she mumbles something that Lisa can't quite catch. (She does hear one word that sounds suspiciously like "Leonard", and it just _figures_ that Lenny's been meddling again. Honestly, for such a cold-hearted bastard he's awfully invested in her love life.)

 

"Supposedly this is romantic," Cait says, more clearly, and Lisa snickers.

 

"Only if we can both skate and can hold hands as we glide around effortlessly." She pauses, considers, and her eyes sparkle as she adds, "Or if one of us falls and brings the other one down, so that we—"

 

Metaphorically she should have seen it coming, her skate catching on one of the divots in the ice at just that moment, but the fact of the matter was that she was skating backwards, and her eyes went comically wide as she abruptly felt herself falling and dragging Cait along with her. She hits the ice with a smack muffled by her layers of clothing- luckily the pond is fairly shallow and frozen right through- and Cait lands on top of her with a mutual "Oof!" of lost breath.

 

They lay there for a moment, stunned, and then Cait starts giggling, pushes herself up onto her hands so she can meet Lisa's eyes. "Like that, right?" she manages, eyes crinkling at the corners and giggles still forming in her lungs, escaping here and there even as she tries to subdue them.

 

"Pure romance," Lisa agrees, laughter fighting its way out of her too, and she reaches up to brush a strand of hair back out of Cait's face. She leaves her hand there, cupping Cait's cheek and wishing she wasn't wearing gloves, and the cold of the ice is creeping through her jeans, probably through the fabric of Cait's gloves, but she doesn't want to move. She runs her thumb over Cait's cheek, feels the way Cait's breath catches and her giggles trail away.

 

Cait watches Lisa's face, the way her brow furrows just slightly, the reverence in her touch obvious even through the leather, and she means to duck in for a kiss, to swallow the words once more, but her mouth moves of its own accord instead. "I think I'm in love with you, Lisa," she murmurs.

 

She almost expects Lisa to snatch her hand away, to fumble her way out from under her and leave Cait stranded here on the ice, but Lisa beams instead. Arches up, replaces her hand with quick, cold kisses along Cait's cheeks. "Just 'think?'" she teases, nips the tip of Cait's nose before flopping back onto the ice. "Because I _know_ , Snowball, that there are two people on this pond right now, and both of them are in love with the other."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there we are! The hopefully-epic conclusion that ended up way closer to half of the wordcount than I expected. (It's about 4800 words to the rest of the fic's 6700.)
> 
> thanks for sticking with me, those of you who have been reading along, and thanks in general for reading, the rest of you!
> 
> on tumblr, you can find me on my sideblog lisasneeze for flash related nonsense, and for all other nonsense you can find me as weekend-conspiracy-theorist

**Author's Note:**

> children are hard to write, so this chapter is tiny in comparison to its siblings
> 
> also, poor len. he's on the receiving end of the bite in the next chapter, too.


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